Colorless Skeins
by PinkPawPrints
Summary: John and Lestrade realize that Sherlock's long-term addiction to cocaine is slowly dragging him down the path of destruction. But does Sherlock even care? No slash; rated T for language and drug references.
1. Perfect Nothingness

The warmth of the fire reflected on my face, flickering in lovely, orange patterns. The pillow beneath my head smelt of the laundry detergent John used when he had the time to do the wash. My arm dangled gracelessly over the side of the armchair, my legs bent and curled sideways, my back buried in warm safety among the cushions. The room was completely in peace; the only sound was the comforting crackling of the fire.

And there was nothing, _nothing_ distracting me from this moment. This beautiful moment in time when I could simply lay here in utter serenity and sigh with relief at the blissful _nothing._ There was nothing in my mind. Nothing to think about. No thoughts racing through me. No worries, no cares, no one to see me, to scoff at me, to mock me, to casually throw that unbearable name for me into conversation...

Nothing. Nothing. _Nothing._

I closed my eyes, letting the firelight caress my pale, prominent cheekbones, completely relaxed. Completely alone. Unseen. Safe. The soft fabric of my dressing gown tied snugly around my waist like a caring embrace, the cushions surrounding me like a fortress, this numbing bliss warming my veins... It was sheer ecstasy. Sighing, I snuggled deeper into the armchair, folding my arms in toward me, the familiar dull ache in the forearm of my left not even registering while I was in this exquisite state of contentment.

Look at the fire, those lovely, flickering patterns of orange and silver and deep cyan. Ah, the smoke, dark and ever-changing and mysterious and delicate. And the clock ticking on the mantelpiece, counting out this golden hour... ticktickticktick... _So_ beautiful.

"Sherlock?" That was John's voice. When had he gotten home? Where had he been in the first place? How long had I been like this...?

Ah, well, none of that mattered, really. His voice was so lovely to listen to. So gentle and caring and frightened. Frightened. Was he frightened for me? He needn't be. I was perfectly fine. Everything was perfect. He was perfect. I was perfect. The world was perfect right now.

Ah... perfection.

"John..." I sighed, blinking slowly and looking up. Blurs. Blurs of pinkish-beige skin. Of a light-brown coat. It would have been disconcerting had I not been so engrossed in my blissful nothingness. He said something surprised-sounding in reply, but I was far too distracted to catch it. It was so warm, so comfortable, so cozy...

I felt arms around me, strong but exceedingly gentle arms. The scent of warmth and caring and John was being pressed against me, working itself into my bloodstream, counteracting the beautiful, terrible poison. I was no longer in my armchair but being carried, carried like a small child who has fallen asleep at the dinner table...

And then, quite suddenly, I was in my own soft bed, nestled into the supple mattress, my aching and mildly confused head against a cool pillow. Heavy blankets were being pulled over me gently, a hand stroking back my sweaty hair.

"Sleep now, Sherlock," a voice whispered softly. And I tried.


	2. Dark Rapture

John stayed by my side throughout the entire night.

Occasionally, I registered the sound of another voice, the sighing of breath, the broken half-snores of a man who is doing his best to remain alert despite exhaustion. But I was unable to concentrate on such things in my wonderful distraction; the sound of my own breathing was utterly fascinating to me, the presto, 6/8 rhythm of my heart held me in rapture for what seemed to be hours. The only thoughts running through my mind were echoing murmurs of complete awe at this dark, entrancing world of peace which had wormed its way into my mind, placing cool fingers on my brain cells, feeling them shuddering with pleasure.

Crickets chirped from somewhere; I could not know if their raspy chords came from an open window or from my deadened, left inner-elbow. Their melodic chirps mingled with the sounds of my shallow breath, harmony, complex melodies, an entire orchestra... playing slow, gold-leaf-plated waltz. Onetwothreeonetwothree...

I laughed.

The echoes rebounded off the darkness loudly. Maniacal cackling. Oh. I was frightening John again. His hand was on my forehead, eyes blinking blearily, concernedly, caringly at me. I could have gazed at them for hours, at their darkly cyan depths like deep ocean water, or sapphires on a black background, or the sky when the sun has just set...

Darkness. How simply beautiful it is. Darkness is absence of light, darkness is nothing, darkness is perfect. My mind was dark right now. I longed for it to stay this way forever.

Had the elation of the drug actually lasted forever, I could never have tired of simply lying there, quiet and warm, listening to my own heartbeat in wonder. However, soon the effects began to slowly wear off and I could feel myself being pulled out of my trace reluctantly. My limbs were growing heavier, my muscles weakening, my lungs filling with sticky, greenish fluid which I knew all too well would wrack my overtired body with hacking coughs in the morning. I was nearing myself again and I despised the close proximity.

A sudden snore from my right made me start and sit bolt upright, staring around wildly. John was sitting in the corner, his head against the wall, his mouth hanging open as he slept.

He'd stayed with me. He'd given up a night of sleep to ensure that I was alright. He hadn't deserted me, he hadn't left me in the armchair by the fire all night, he hadn't laughed at me or simply scoffed and said I was insane... He'd stayed with me. He'd stayed with me. He'd _stayed with me_.

"John?" I said sharply, my voice slightly hoarser than usual. He stirred, blinking at me and lifting his head.

"You doing alright?" he asked wearily, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

I nodded, casting my gaze downward, pondering. "I'm just perfect."


	3. Shame

The mug was trembling as I put brought it to my mouth, the hot porcelain surface knocking against my teeth, burning my cracked lips as steam assaulted my aching eyes. John sat across from me, the little wooden table between us not allowing enough room for the bitter disappointment in his gaze to dissipate before reaching me. Without finding the motivation to take a sip, I set the full mug back down, pressing quivering fingers to the searing surface and hoping to find a bit of solace in the warmth, avoiding the eyes of my frustrated companion.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sherlock." John's voice was grim, the harshness of his tone sending painful waves of thought through my exhausted mind. I ought to be ashamed... I ought to be _ashamed_... Was I? I wasn't quite certain.

"How long has this been going on behind my back? Have you been shooting up cocaine every time my back's turned? Why would you ever even dream of doing this, Sherlock? I don't understand! Why would you risk everything you have, all your intelligence, your health, your _life_?" The betrayal and anger in his voice was evident; I could hear him enunciating every syllable in attempts to make me understand, to feel a piece of his fury. I remained silent, staring at the pattern of knots in the table without really seeing them.

"Are you even listening to me, or are you too busy feeling sorry for yourself now that you're down off your high?" John spat, his chair scraping across the floor deafeningly as he stood, bringing his palms down onto the table in rage.

Oh. This is what he had meant. _This_ was shame.

I closed my eyes, feeling my face flush and back tingle with the desire to be pressed up against a wall, to hide away somewhere dark and cold where I would never be seen or heard from again. Nausea curled in my stomach when I looked up at him slowly, my face slightly more slack than usual, to find him staring down at me, a demand for a response in his eyes.

"I didn't know you were coming home, John," I rasped, unable to look at him for much longer than a second before turning my blurred gaze back to the table, folding my shaking arms in an outward expression of mutual anger, secretly willing them to hold me together for a few more seconds, "I didn't mean for you to see me like that..."

"Well, of course you didn't mean for me to see you like that!" he cried, his voice breaking into a caustic laugh of vehemence, "The great Sherlock Holmes, as high as a fucking _kite!_ I can't even leave you alone for a couple of hours with you completely _destroying_ yourself! I'm not your caretaker, Holmes!"

I glared up at him, guilt seeping through my innards. "I realize that, _Watson_," I snarled, reflecting his use of my surname, "I don't expect or want you to be. I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself without you prying into my life."

John emitted another short, bitter laugh. "You're obviously _not. _Does Lestrade know about this? Is that why he never looks further than the microwave during his supposedly _pretend_ 'drugs busts'?"

My fingers dug into my upper arms, cutting off the circulation in hopes that my left inner-elbow would stop its thirsty aching, a sigh escaping from my lips as that question dredged up those old, dark memories from the murky gutters of my mind. How could I even begin to tell him? How could he even begin to understand?

_But he will understand,_ a voice whispered silently to me, _Isn't John the perfect person to tell? He's a doctor, he empathizes with everyone, he's kind, and... he actually cares about you..._

"John," I whispered, my faced flushed with red shame, "Sit back down. I need to talk to you."


	4. Chocolate Cake and Melodrama

I slammed the door of the enormously empty house with a grimly humorous vigor, chuckling to myself slightly as I kicked off my Converse in opposite directions, one's rubber sole scuffing to wall with a long black mark. A backpack fell from my stick-like frame to the polished, wooden floor with a thud as I strolled amiably down the hall, my hands trembling in my coat pockets, humming something that vaguely resembled the song _Girl_ by the Beatles. That familiar, lackadaisical warmth was purring through my body, massaging the tense muscles, turning my eyes on the beauty of simplicity, steaming out the wrinkles in my thoughts...

"Sherlock?" I turned lazily, swinging one leg through the air in theatrical slowness and lifting my eyebrows in smiling surprise.

"Mycroft," I drawled, grinning languidly, my ears catching the tied-note slides of my vaguely numbed vocal chords, "_Always_ a pleasure to see you home. I suppose cross-country practice was cancelled? _What_ a bloody pity; you could most _definitely_ use the exercise."

Mycroft narrowed his eyes, clearly not taking in my words at all, rather studying my spine as it curved forwards and back with my words, the enormous pupils evident against their light-blue surfaces, the hands that twitched while I gestured overdramatically.

"I'm telling Father," he sighed after a moment of silence which would might have been uncomfortable had I been in any condition to think that way, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers and closing his eyes in bitter disappointment, shaking his head at me, "This time I honestly am, Sherlock. This has gone past the point where I can allow it to continue. I mean, look at yourself! You're... you're..." Mycroft's uptight and pompous nature wouldn't allow him to say exactly what he meant.

I, however, was never one to play the saint. "High?" I suggested innocently, grinning like a jack-o-lantern and stepping closer him with each word, "Stoned? Wasted? Smashed?" I pressed my torso against his, leering into his face until he shuddered and backed away, terrified of catching whatever hypothetical disease he thought I brought with me, yet I continued advancing on him, speaking slowly, deliberately slurring my words. I cackled manically, watching him stumble back with a combination of anger and fear plain on his rounded face. "Well... perhaps not so much the last two. Those imply a certain level of sedation, generally from depressants. And this most _definitely_ isn't a depressant, my darling Mycroft. This is..."

"Sherlock!" Mycroft snapped, shoving me away and glaring up into my face from a safe distance, "Get away from me. I'm. Calling. Father. Right. Now."

"Brilliant," I snickered, "You do that, honey. Whatever makes you happy. I'll be in the kitchen eating the most _delicious _slice of chocolate cake I will _ever_ taste and laughing at your utter stupidity." I turned to leave, sauntering a few steps before holding up on index finger in the air and spinning around exaggeratedly. "_And_ at the fact that you can't even _eat_ chocolate cake, you disgustingly gluttonous mound of blubber." What a fantastic insult.

Mycroft was left standing there, a look of frustrated disbelief tangled on his features as I strolled away casually with my pocketed thumbs tracing the lining of the coat I still wore, short nails scraping out bits of lint with nervous delicacy. The kitchen was wonderfully warm as I entered, the windows glowing in the coppery-lit room with an autumn sunlight so beautiful that I strode over to them, mouth partially open in wonder, to gaze out at the swaying trees, the fiery leaves blowing through a white sky. The world was so painfully lovely, so awe-strikingly gorgeous, _just so fucking pretty_ that it nearly stung my eyes with tears. Damn Mycroft, trying to take all the fun out of everything. That tense, arrogant, ambitious little brat. I was fine, and he knew it.

I was _fine._


	5. MaggotEaten Soul

The back of my esophagus burned, a dull sting crawling up the inside of my nose as I slumped backward against the wall, a broken doll with its clothes torn and eyelids fluttering grotesquely. All too soon, however, I tore myself upright again ruthlessly as my innards quaked, pummeling and bruising each other in their efforts to escape the quickly failing body which held them. The arms holding me upright over the toilet bowl shook horribly, the aching muscles stretching painfully, threatening to lose all their strength and simply let me fall even farther over the edge of all sanity and reason.

I fell back to the cold surface of the wall exhaustedly, fighting the urge to moan aloud, dark, filthy beads of sweat stinging my eyes. Why wasn't I dead yet? My soul was already lying near the back of some shadowed, desolate alleyway of despair in a pool of putrid fluid leaking from its wrecked organs, colonies of maggots wriggling from the brimming skull. If it were possible for a living human being to feel this much agonized sorrow, what would Hell be like when I got there, if it even existed? And what if it didn't exist? Would I simply slip out of all state being, cease to be real? Was that possible?

Something fell around my shoulders. I flinched, spinning around jerkily, my teeth baring in an instinctual snarl and my eyes narrowing in hatred, only to recognize Lestrade's prematurely lined face watching me from in between curtains of shadow. His hand gripped my shoulder, the muscular arm behind a soft, faded sweatshirt draped over me soothing my violent shudders.

"Hasn't anyone ever t-told you," I growled, biting back a sharp intake of breath as a flash of white pain carved its initials onto the inside of my skull, "that it's _rude_ to walk into o-other people's... flats without in-invitation?"

Lestrade made no response, instead stretching out his long legs with a sigh and leaning back against the wall languidly beside my huddled form. I glared at him with aching eyes for a moment before being forced to shut them again in agony, shivering so intensely that he tightened his grip on me, pulling me so close to him that the scent of cologne pervaded my senses and gripped my stomach with nausea. Irritably, if slightly more weakly than I would have liked, I pushed him away, curling up more snugly into myself and resting my head on my knees.

"You know, Sherlock," he mused after a long silence permeated only by my harsh breathing, "I really respect you."

A caustic, disbelieving laugh escaped me. "That's utterly absurd," I snapped without looking up, my voice muffled slightly by the fabric of my black tee-shirt, bearing a diagram of the Periodic Table of Elements, which I hadn't bothered to change in several days.

"Why is that absurd?" Lestrade asked, a frown in his quiet voice, "You're smart, Sherlock, much smarter than I'll ever be. You're not afraid to speak your mind, either. At _all._" He chuckled a bit at that. "You're confident, assertive, witty... sometimes you're just damned hilarious. And you're... _determined._ Sometimes too much so._"_

I said nothing. _Let him get to the point and leave. As quickly as possible._

Lestrade sighed. "What I'm trying to say is... well... you're being stupid."

"Thank you," I muttered irritably.

He snorted, shaking his head. "No, no, I just meant that... you shouldn't be doing this alone."

I raised my head from the safe darkness of my huddled body to glare at him, bloodshot eyes narrowed in resentment, trembling fingers clutching at my upper arms fiercely.

"You have no right to tell me what I 'should' or 'should not' do, _Inspector_," I snapped, my quick voice dripping with cold anger, "Despite your narcissistic delusions of being in control of me, you are not and I am, in fact, quite superior to you in most senses. You have absolutely no hold over me whatsoever. Therefore, I suggest that you go back to work—where London citizens could be dying as we speak—and _leave me alone_."

Lestrade folded his arms over his chest smugly as I looked on in complete exasperation. "Fine. Whatever you say_, Mr. Holmes_. I'll go back to work. You're under arrest for the possession of illegal substances."


	6. Home

Lestrade's arms were folded across his chest in smugly patient expectation, his eyes fixed on my own despite the fact that I refused to take even the slightest glance at him out of my peripherals, staring instead at the disgustingly cheerful floral patterns of the towels draped on the rack across the bathroom, their wrinkled folds yellowed and grimy with neglect. A bitter sigh slowly dragged itself from my wheezing chest after a moment of pondering.

"You have nothing on me. Quite obviously, Lestrade, I am no longer in possession of said 'illegal substances'." I turned to glare at him with eyes half-shut, twitchily chewing off a fingernail as my insides continued to rearrange themselves sickeningly, and added in a muttered undertone, "However much I'd like to be..."

"So, if I take you to the Yard right now and run a drug test on you...?" Lestrade turned his graying head to one side, raising his eyebrows doubtfully.

"You'll get precisely the results you expect, assuming it is effective enough to detect the toxins nearly twenty-two hours after they have worn off," I snapped, "And the entirety of Scotland Yard will be at your throat, demanding a full report on exactly why Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade would choose to associate himself with the likes of _me_; why you didn't report me _sooner_."

He unfolded his arms, looking at me with that familiar expression of curious interest falling across his features. "Only twenty-two hours..." he repeated quietly, "And you're already..."

My weary, bloodshot eyes were truly not capable of all of this glaring. I gave up.

"Something like that," I sighed, slumping further down against the wall, watching my vision spinning detachedly, "I hadn't thought... I didn't realize how... quickly it would set in."

Lestrade rearranged his legs uncomfortably, his naturally communicative nature clearly falling just short of enabling him to console a recovering drug addict. _A recovering drug addict._ How strange that term sounded, even in the closeness of my own mind, when applied to me. But I was, was I not? A broken man forcing himself through withdrawal. How absurdly melodramatic. And I despised it. I despised _myself._

"It... It must be... umm, pretty bad," Lestrade stumbled clumsily, knowing he needed to say _something_, anything. What was the use beside that of self-assurance in his supposed wholesomeness? His words only added to my discomfiture.

I said nothing.

He coughed, shifting his weight a bit closer to the shuddering wreck of a body that was betraying me. "You know, Sherlock, if you want... you could, umm... stay with me for a bit."

My eyes flashed to his face in confused suspicion, reading the lines there, seeking for the flicker of sarcastic insincerity I expected and growing only more wary when it escaped me. Was Lestrade being... serious? Had Mycroft found me in this state, he would have sighed in that through-the-nose way with disappointment and irritably left me lying here, curled on that bathroom floor, only to submit spinelessly to the demand of the needle again, as I had so many times in the past. My mind flickered to how it _could _be, if he truly were offering to temporarily take me in. An actual bed, maybe, with a soft, thick blanket, unlike the scratchy sheet I pulled over the sofa I slept on each night... And a heating system to fill the room with warm air, instead of the damp winter wind that swept in through the gaps in the one window here... And _food_. I hadn't eaten in so, so long...

"Do you... mean that?" I rasped, my voice layered with such a pathetic, childlike hope that my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

He smiled gently, reaching downward to grasp my thin shoulders with one arm, his warmth radiating through my grateful bones until I swallowed back the lump that had risen in my throat, inwardly repulsed by my ghastly lack of dignity.

"Of course, Sherlock," Lestrade said softly, "Let's get you home."


	7. Misunderstanding

I felt pathetic admitting it to even myself; the concept of addiction had always been a delicate, unwanted subject for me, one that I never would have brought to conversation intentionally. However, in light of my uncomfortably personal discussion with John, it was difficult to ignore the all-too-familiar twisting in my stomach, the twitching spine, the tightening throat, the spinning mind flooding with white flashes of pain...

It was withdrawal, wasn't it? Just completely simple, desperate, agonizing withdrawal.

_Don't think about it... Don't make it look like... John can't be aware of its intensity..._

Decades came and went as I lay curled on the couch with my back to the room, huddled beneath a blanket moodily until crushing paranoia caused me to look backwards over my shoulder frequently enough to warrant simply turning over. As I pulled the plaid-patterned, wooly assurance of the cover over the back of my head to leave only my puffy face exposed, my mind churned, spitting out ideas frantically, searching for an escape route like a trapped animal.

I wouldn't go through with this again. I couldn't. I would die. It would kill me. I was going to die, I was going to die... I wasn't strong enough, I was going to die... Ah, well, oh well. The world would simply be rid of one more egotistical, sociopathic drug-addict. And who would care?

_John would be so relieved..._

I swallowed hard, sitting up slowly as nausea squeezed my lower esophagus, tying my stomach into shoe-lace bows. My eyes began a staring-war with the stained beige carpet only moments before my flat-mate walked in, holding a plate of toast and still humming along to an unmelodious rendition of _Yesterday_ as he sat down in his chair across the room. He crossed his legs, slipper-swathed right foot on left knee, and leaned back into the soft fabric, cradling the Union Jack pillow with one arm. And his eyes fell upon me, upon my huddled posture, the swollen, bloodshot eyes, the shaking hands... It was so obvious. So, so obvious.

"You know, Sherlock," John began quietly, smiling almost imperceptibly, "You _are_ allowed to talk to me. If you want, I mean. You're allowed to have emotions. I didn't quite expect you to feel so compelled to... stop just because I figured it out. It... well, it doesn't seem like you to be concerned of what I think."

_But I _don't_ feel compelled to stop! I don't _want_ to stop, John! Just get out of the fucking room already so that I can... No. Alright. You don't need it. You don't need anything. You're better than that..._

_...No. I'm not. I'm _really_ not. Get out of the room, John._

I said nothing, raising my eyebrows challengingly at the floor.

John continued, feigning oblivion toward the fact that my lips were betraying me, trembling too much to convince him of my stoicism. "I was just thinking... well... it might not be a great idea for you to go, you know, completely cold-turkey anyway." He was looking at me, gauging my reaction. I didn't move.

My heart leapt a bit, though. _I ought to be ashamed..._

"We could do it slowly, if you want. Over the course of a couple of weeks. It doesn't have to be so..." John glanced up from under his thin eyelashes, his mouth twisted sideways in uncertainty as he searched for a proper word.

"Completely horrible?" I suggested coolly, looking up to bore holes through his dark eyes, through his brain, to carve my anger there like initials in a tree trunk. He just stared back, his expression blank and unreadable save for a slight downward pull of one eyebrow.

"Well..." he began unsurely, tilting his head at me, "Yeah, I..."

I hated uncertainty. I hated this stillness, this peace, this calm, polite surrender. _Why doesn't he UNDERSTAND?_

"You don't get it, do you?" I hissed suddenly, cutting him off mid-sentence as I stood as quickly and as steadily as was possible in my current state, pacing to the window, turning my back on him, "I don't _want_ your help, John. Or your supposed 'sympathy' or whatever it is you decide to call it. It's only for your benefit, not mine. Does it make you feel like a good person, John? Putting up with me? Not giving up on me? Does it make you feel all warm 'n' fuzzy inside?" I clenched my fists, squeezing the life out of my thin, bumpy-knuckled fingers, wanting to break them, wanting to break _anything_.

"Because I abhor it," I spat, continuing, disgust sharpening my voice, "You're just like Mycroft and Lestrade, aren't you? You'll decide you care about me now, you'll put in a hand for the possibility of improvement 'in the long run', you'll _watch _and you'll _wait _and _pretend to empathize_ as I just slowly whither to the point of near-death and torture myself and run one-oh-five fevers and vomit up everything I eat for days and just _shake and shake and shake.._. And then, I'll get better, won't I? And you'll claim all the credit, because of course, I did nothing at all. Oh, look, you've cleaned up the Freak. Hooray for you. But I won't get better, will I? I'll _never_ get better, John! I've been forced through this too many times to think that's even _possible_, even if I _wanted_ to! And I _don't!_"

I was shouting now, my low, furious voice echoing through the _emptyemptyempty_ rooms, my fingers gripping the curtains of the window so hard that the knuckles had turned bright pink, my eyes shut against the sun glare, my back burning with shame and guilt and embarrassment as the vague perception of his gaze flitted across my nerves...

A deep, shuddering sigh fell from my constricted chest as I spun around slowly in that awful, awful silence, not looking at him, my teeth clenched.

"This isn't your decision to make, John. And, if you don't like that, I suggest that you spend the night at Sarah's," I breathed softly, furiously, closing my eyes, wanting to hurt him deeply enough to feel just an insignificant scrap of this agony, to _understand_, "Because I am about to get _so fucking high right now _that I won't even know who you are."


	8. UpsideDown In The Armchair

**Hey, guys! How's it a-goin'? Good? Good.  
>Anyways. I wanted to thank ya'll for the lovely reviews and favorites and all of that superdy-duper stuff and apologize for the unfortunate, yet undeniable, fact that this is quite a confusing and vague chapter. The veryveryvery beginning part in italics is Sherlock thinking; then, the POV switches to John. Finally, it ends up on Lestrade's point of view and, from that point on, hopefully becomes a bit less unintelligently-written. I tried my darnedest. :P <strong>

**Anyway, thanks a billion for reading, all you fabulous Sherlockians!3 I love you guys all to pieces!**

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_Silver silence scoring thirsty veins with living fire, consuming that absence of being, the space where stars crumble into themselves with shards of roars and golden-lion hair burning, curling, dead-spider-legs. Waves through the wildflowers, the poppies, padded coward's feet, the emeralds in those eyes, the secret giggling through the stream. Finding... Yellow and black, green and silver but never this crimson-gold, these purring panthers and... Listen. Listen to Her purrrr, that slipping-away cat, Her raven's-feather blue-shine bangs in Her eyes and charcoal-gray dress; She's laughing with you in Her arms, you're slipping away, those siren-voices tugging you to the watercolored pages of fish and pebbles and metallic scales... Darkness, blackness, the nighttime, She isn't actually real. Only light exists, and His absence. It was so cold before that golden-haired sun..._

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"You alright there, John? You seem a bit troubled."

I looked up out of the amber depths of the mug before me, meeting Lestrade's eyes nervously for a moment before looking away again, picking at splinters in the wooden table between us with my fingernails.

"I'm fine," I responded wearily, biting my lip, "It's just that..." A sigh escaped me. I supposed there wasn't any turning back now. But it _did_ seem a tad unfaithful of me to be speaking of my friend's personal life behind his back, even if I had good intentions in mind. "It's—it's Sherlock, Lestrade. He's been a bit... well, _off_ lately."

My drinking companion tilted his head to one side, regarding me with stern, paternal brown eyes as he tapped thick fingers on the table un-rhythmically, judging my body language with his gaze.

"What d'you mean by 'off'?" he asked curiously, his voice betraying an almost-disguised hint of worry.

"I—well... I-I found him yesterday in a much less... _coherent _state than usual," I began uncertainly, trying to introduce the topic to conversation gently, my palms sweating a bit. _Come on, John! This _is_ what you invited him to the pub for, after all._

My statement must not have, however, been quite as suave as I'd hoped, for the moment the words had left my mouth, Lestrade pushed his chair in further with a scrape, his elbows meeting the table with a bang he seemed quite unaware of, the composure in his eyes shattering in an instant. I looked up nervously to find him glaring openmouthed at the table as though it had personally offended him to the point of disbelief, his forehead cupped in his hands.

He swallowed, Adam's-apple bobbing. "John. You don't mean... what I think you mean? Do you?"

"I think I do," I said quietly.

"Shit," Lestrade growled immediately, his voice so utterly un-Lestrade-like that I was rather taken aback, "Dammit, Sherlock. _Dammit! _I can't _believe _this... I just..." He looked up at me, his gaze so terribly broken that my heart caught in empathy. "How bad is it?" he asked hoarsely.

I closed my eyes, the last of Sherlock's words poking glass shards through my ribcage once more as they echoed through my mind, the harsh, furious breaths lifting his skeletal chest, the slam of the door as I stalked out without my jacket, the sounds of my own breath catching in my throat...

"Bad," I sighed, guilt panging horribly through my core, "We had a row about it. He told me to go live at Sarah's if I didn't like it because... well... he said he wasn't able to stop."

Lestrade exhaled, rubbing the top of his grayed, bristly head with clasped hands and leaning back, livid anguish etched plainly into the lines of his face. "I just... I can't believe this... Did he tell you that I helped him to... recover last time?" I nodded. "You know, he actually _thanked_ me. During that week, and almost the month that followed, it was like... like we were actually _friends._ I really, honestly thought he was _better_. I just... I can't believe that he slipped up again. Especially now that _you're_ with him, John. You keep him from... from imploding. I've rarely seen him act as sanely as he does when he's around you."

I almost laughed. "Sane? Are we talking about the same man who keeps eyeballs in the microwave and shoots _the fucking wall _for entertainment?"

"You should have seen him before," Lestrade muttered darkly, taking a sip of his drink in a rather final way and fingering the coat that lay on the back of the chair behind him. Setting the mug down with a light thud, he looked at me, contemplating for a moment before speaking. "Would you be offended if I asked to borrow the key to your flat, John?"

"No," I answered, wrinkling my eyebrows in confusion at the sudden change in the direction of the conversation, "I have them right..." I paused, recognizing his intentions and drawing my hand away from my pocket slowly, meeting his gaze warily. "Lestrade, no. That won't help anything. We both know what you're going to find if you go in there."

He raised his eyebrows at me. "Exactly."

)( )( )(

_We both know what you're going to find if you go in there..._

Of course I had known. Of course I bloody had known exactly what state I would find him in. So then what masochistic, irrational force had possessed me, had bade me to ask for John's keys, had brought me to the door of their parlor? Why was I standing out here right now, listening to a silent room? Why hadn't I run back down the steps when that silvery, half-terrified giggle from behind the door had run cold fingers of fear down my spine nearly a half-hour ago?

Because I fucking loved that man like my own son, that's why.

He was lying in the armchair when I walked in, two feet clad in red-and-green-striped stockings (which could only have belonged to John) perched on the top of the back cushion like long, thin ravens out of that famous poem, his head hanging off the seat, hands clasped behind it in relaxation, his entire body completely upside-down. His eyes were shut under swollen red lids, his cheeks flushed with intoxication (as well as an excess of blood due to his extremely odd posture), and his mouth turned in a half-sarcastic grin.

"Sherlock?" I asked quietly, shaking his shoulder. He didn't respond.

A nauseating feeling tore through my heart, crushing the air out of my lungs, drying my eyes. It was just like before. Just as bad as before. Possibly even worse. Back then, when I'd arrested him for suspected drug use and brought him back to the station to lock him up until a test could be preformed, only to have him solve a crime just from half-heard snatches of the officers' conversation... Back when he'd lived in that halfway-sedated state, never eating, never sleeping, an animated skeleton surviving on black coffee and cigarettes and cocaine... Back when I'd brought him home with me, to endure that shaking and sweating and vomiting on the bathroom floor, when he'd been semi-delirious with pain and confusion... It was for nothing. _Nothing._

_That idiot. That junkie. That _traitor.

But, even as these furious thoughts filled my mind, I was straightening Sherlock, righting him, leaning his lolling head against the wing of the chair, stroking my fingers through his lank, greasy curls. As I propped him up against John's Union Jack pillow, his eyelids fluttered a bit, lifting for an instant to reveal glassy, fully-dilated pupils surrounded by only the faintest sliver of blue.

"Lestrade?" he croaked, breathing in raggedly.

"Yeah," I sighed irritably, "I'm here."

But my frustration was cooled instantly as Sherlock's long, thin fingers reached upwards to my hand, still stroking his hair, and encased it in his own.


	9. Gray

**Salutations, my fellow Sherlockians! :3 I happen to be exceptionally exhausted on this fine day in history, so this may be the most absolutely terrible 'chapter' ever. Just warning you. :P But thanks for reading anyway, and I hope you enjoy! Go ahead and leave a reveiwwww... ^^**

The world was gray that morning.

The light was white. It blurred my vision, fogged everything into crystalline, stinging tears, like insubstantial eye-drops. I was black. My mind was all darkness, the stars themselves blown out like birthday candles on a giant, charcoal-colored cake dripping with un-rainbowed oil-icing.

The world was gray.

Gray hair and gray eyes and graying face full of worry lines and revulsion looking back at me.

"Get out."

My voice had been meant to be a threat, a booming, resonating command full of cold fury and lofty self-position. I fell miserably short of my goal.

Instead, it was a hoarse, broken whisper. Like I was pleading. I horrified myself.

_Was_ I pleading?

"How dare you."

I could feel my lips curl independently into a snarl, a grin, my breath tripping and stumbling into a humorless chuckle.

"You're beginning to sound like Mycroft," I growled. He looked down at the thick, interlocked fingers clasped between his knees, unmoving, silent, the aura of spiraling desperation filling the air with its thick smoke.

His hands were shaking nearly as much as mine.

"Sherlock..." His voice was quieter than his thoughts as he sat there, under my gaze, observed and laid out bare, dissected like a terrified white rat. "Just... tell me _why_."

Why?

_Tired. So. Tiredly, quietly, echo-y stillness and the empty air filled with the scent of hairspray and grilled-cheese and golden retrievers and crushing nothingness. Exhaustion, heavy with eyelids, tucking in like dryer-warmed blankets of snow, squelching tires, slipping headlights... Weighed-down, deep-end drown... Tying yourself to a dead man, his vice-grip clenched on your elbow. Cut him free and slit-your-throat for those gills, ghostly webbing stretched through pale, thin, trembling phantom-trees, gulping down the saltwater wrung out from their pink crocodile-ducts. Tired. So. Tired..._

"I don't know."

Lestrade looked up at the sound of my voice shattering the momentary silence. It wasn't the suddenness of my response that he reacted to, however, but the voice which spoke it, the terror behind it, the hollowness of tarred-and-feathered innocence. His lower eyelids drew up toward his nose as he contemplated me with his lips pressed together; his prominent Adam's-apple bobbed as he swallowed.

My cheeks flushed, my throat sickly-sweet with guilt and self-hatred as he stared at me, rearranging the details into the man of four years ago. The man with greasy, unkempt hair. The man with bloodshot eyes. The man with bruised arms. The man with a hole-filled trench-coat and an empty violin case. The man who was not yet old enough to even be properly identified as a man...

"When did you start again?" Lestrade asked hoarsely.

My closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. Composure. Perfect serenity. Lean forward. Elbows on knees... slowly. Fingertips together. Hold them still. Open your eyes, look into his...

"A month after I left your flat," I said quietly, moving my gaze away from him, unable to stare into the depths of his furiously working mind, "It got worse. And then better. And worse again... The spans of time between cases were always more difficult, as were the winters. Workless days and cold weather together were... entirely impossible. You... you don't know how many times I awoke on the floor without any recollection of how I had gotten there."

I glanced up at Lestrade uneasily, who was listening with a countenance betraying bewildered horror.

"Even more so recently," I continued. _Unfeeling. Uncaring. Emotionless._ "The high has been eluding me. I've built up entirely too much tolerance to the drug; it's becoming necessary to take a great deal more than could be considered prudent. It's really only a matter of time until..."

"Oh my... No, Sherlock," Lestrade broke in, his deep voice trembling. I stared down at the carpet, cool, stoic grimness carved permanently into the angles of my face. He was being ridiculously oversensitive to the facts. "Please don't say that..."

"Until I overdose," I continued loudly, drowning him out, spitting out the words he needed to hear in advance, "I've already done it once before, as you well know. And this time..."

"Sherlock!" Now _he_ was the one pleading.

"...it's very likely that I won't survive."


	10. Tranquility

**Hey, guyssss3 :} How's your Week From Hell going? Hopefully it's all full of carols and candy-canes and snowmen and you've already done your shopping and wrapping and cram-it-in-before-the-holidays-test-studying unlike a certain dorky fifteen-year-old who wastes all her time writing fanfiction... Oh well! ^^ Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Joyful Kwanza, Cheery Festivas, Blissful Holidays, and all that jazzzz... Have a lovely break, dawlfaces, and thanks a billion for the reviews. **

"Sherlock..." His lips were parted, teeth exposed, cheek muscles slack beneath up-turned eyes. It was an ugly expression, a grotesque one, a sagging-lined caricature of disbelieving concern that churned my stomach with the longing to melt into a black-and-blue puddle of misery and hatred and self-rebuking horror, never to rise again. I couldn't stand this. I couldn't stand feeling those eyes staring straight through mine into the depths of a shattered mind, watching the shudders wrench their way free of my tightened muscles, the chest rise and fall for the heavy air, the left fingers curl and uncurl and curl and uncurl and...

My thoughts were going to rip each other into paper-scrap pieces if I sat here any longer.

Casually enthusiastic, I leapt to my stocking-covered feet, my hand instinctively catching the wing of the armchair my vision spun, the blanket falling around my ankles in a rip-off-the-band-aid heap.

"Lestrade," I replied coolly, turning my back to him and striding over the mantel on legs that were quite a bit more wobbly than they ought to have been, the warmth of a newly-made fire stroking my bare knees.

"You... You just _can't..._ I don't... I... Sherlock..."

I hated that he was so shaken. What kind of a convoluted person was I to allow this to...

"Lestrade." A smirk twisted my lips.

"Stop that," he growled, his trembling voice committing treason to all sternness. The burning in my lower back curled my shoulders inward. I steepled my fingers. Smooth face. Tranquility.

"You need to quit."

"I may put the notion up for consideration if you would spare me the lecture. Possibly."

"I'll arrest you if that's what it takes."

"No, you won't."

"Do you think you're above the law, Sherlock? Because you're really _not_, you know."

"Do you think you could do anything without me, Lestrade? Because you really couldn't, you kn..."

"Don't take that tone with me, you... you _ingrate!_"

I spun around, fury boiling in my stomach, eyes flashing with cold vehemence, and strode toward Lestrade, advancing until I was mere centimeters away. He glared up at me, his face flushed with anger, teeth almost bared in primitive ferocity.

My lips barely parted as I spoke, my fists clenched. "Stop pretending to be my father, Lestrade."

His cheeks neared a dangerous shade of plum as the room went silent, his eyes darting spasmodically across my face, reading the swollen eyes, the chattering jaw, the twitching veins...

_I'm undone, I'm so undone... There's no dignity left in this now... I'm dying; I'm going to die. I'm going to die._

_...Please help me._

And then, he threw up his hands. And stepped back. And shook his head.

"You know what, Sherlock?" Lestrade muttered as he turned around, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his once-neatly-pressed pants, "You're right. Do whatever you want."

The door of the parlor squeaked as he opened it. I flinched.

"I'll tell John to come by and collect his stuff as soon as possible. Don't expect to see me again."


	11. Curtains

**Mrrrreowww, happy Christmas Eve! This chapter, the product of my late-night-Friday vigil, is much longer than the others because I was having so much fun slipping in and out of the vague, descriptive, angsty nonsense of Sherlock's brain. ^^ He's a great character. I honestly don't think I could write fanfiction for any other fandom; I've never even tried. **

**Anywayz, hope you likeee thissss and thanks so much for the reviews, guys! It really makes my day whenever I get one. You all are seriously the bestest. Oodles of love to you!**

I didn't like its scent.

I never had. It made my stomach lift a bit within me, uncomfortably pressing itself against my heart, spurring the hot, squelching organ to twist in protest, gagging within the confines of my prominent ribs. It made my neck-bones twitch and my ankles go cold and my eyes prick with something akin to tears.

My body rebelled; my mind worshipped.

That amber-colored, syrupy scent. Threatening to drown me like a prehistoric mosquito in its almost stiflingly cozy clutches. I wouldn't have minded one bit if it had. If I had simply fallen backwards into the delicious aroma of upturned forest-earth, the decayed remains of autumn varnished with walnuts, the insect-filled loam of centuries of fallen redwoods, buzzing and hissing and settling into my ears.

But it wasn't the same as my forest of snow. It was much closer to here than that place where the spruces were hung with glittering peppermint icicles of sap, the blue-black trees standing proud with their needles all scattered over the powdery white glaze...

It was too hot in here. The window was already thrown wide, the curtains flapping madly around the gap, halfway weighed-down by the rain that was rapping on the walls and roof and... door. Door. Someone's knocking on the...

"Why's the window open? It's pouring."

John's voice. John.

John's arms folding around him to express a theatrical shiver. John's eyes wandering around the flat, the flat, the torn-apart flat. John's brow furrowing in confusion. John's nostrils flaring as he took in the concept of that all-too-detectable scent...

"Would you like me to close it?" I asked unconcernedly, meeting his eyes with a languid grin and finally releasing my breath. My foggy-hazy-white breath that carried the same earthy fragrance as the rest of the room.

I lifted my hand to my mouth again.

In. Slowly, in. In, in, in... Hold.

"What's that?" His voice was careful. Frightened, fearful, concerned. Oh, how I loathed concern.

I held up a finger, tightening all the muscles in my nose and shutting my eyes in concentration. Still holding. Hang on a moment.

"_Sherlock!"_

I released my breath in one short, exhaled gasp, chuckling, letting the concentrated smoke stream out through my nose as I laughed quietly to myself.

"As if you don't know," I drawled comfortably when I'd recovered well enough, shaking my head and blinking violently as the world continued to spin, a corner of my mouth upturned in an unperturbed smile, "Want some?" I cocked an eyebrow enticingly and stretched my smile further, extending the steaming, twisted wreck of a soda can in my right hand toward him.

John gaped at me, stammering for words.

"_No!_ I don't '_want some'!_" he choked, "Is _this_ what you've been up to for the two days I've been gone? I thought it was only cocaine, but now I walk in here and you're just sitting here and smoking pot and being all _calm_ and _collected_ and... and the window's open and you're high again and I don't know what I'm supposed to do and... _Ohmygoodness, _Sherlock, _stop that!_"

I suppressed the urge to laugh, holding the warmth within me until every last scrap of its heat had chilled, again lifting a finger at John, whose eyes were growing more alarmed by the second. The breath whooshed out of me at last when I felt that my eyes might simply burst with the pressure, the comforting tingle of utter calmness seeping through my lungs to my burning veins, easing the agony of unquenched longing.

I flashed a lazy smirk in his direction, exposing my teeth, a rarity for me and my pair of pale, thin lips. They had stopped shaking.

"You've got it backwards, sweetheart," I hummed languidly. My words must have been terribly slurred judging by the blurred, bending mess that was my vision, but I neither noticed nor cared. "This is nothing new for you to... _fuss_ over. This is improvement. This is _progress_."

John stared at me hollowly. "Progress."

My smile faltered a bit, but I calmed, twitching the corners of my mouth back upwards and closing my eyes. "Yes."

"Okay. So now you're on two drugs instead of one. Brilliant, Sherlock. Very _progressive."_

I snorted, sitting up a bit and trying to follow the cracks on the ceiling with my eyes, refusing to look directly at him as I said, "No, John, just one."

He was silent. Confused? Was he looking at me? My throat flushed with humiliation.

"Just one drug." I ignored it. "I haven't been... under the influence of..." I could feel the heat burning on my face as I choked out the word, willing myself not to feel the burning in my forearm, the pressure behind my eyes, the nausea churning my stomach... I knew it was purely psychological. I certainly wasn't in physical pain at this point. I had numbed myself to the point of nearly being unable to recall where I was.

It still wasn't enough.

"...cocaine since... since Lestrade left..."

In, in, pull in slowly, deeply... Hold.

Erase, erase, erase... Go away, you fucking _demon!_ Leave me, Satan, I plead with th... Oh my god... God, please help me. Please, please he... If you even exist. And you aren't as repulsed by me as I am. Oh God, God, please let me die...

There was suddenly a weight beside me, sinking the couch down, shifting my throbbing, bubbling head ever-so slightly. Enough to make me lose my lungful of warmth in surprise. I opened my eyes in angered protest as my makeshift bowl was eased from my palm by a hand much colder than I recalled it being.

"Give i—"

"Replacing cocaine with pot isn't going to make things any better, Sherlock." His tone of voice was bordering on a funeral dirge.

I glanced at him. "Marijuana isn't addictive," I sighed as though he were a particularly slow four-year-old, "Its side-effects are temporary. And..." I flushed again. "...it's impossible to overdose."

John shook his head, staring at the floor. "A person can become addicted to absolutely _anything_; at least psychologically. _You_, of all people, especially would worry me. And the side-effects _aren't_ just temporary. At least not if you're planning on continuing it."

I snorted and shook my head. _You of all people..._ "I'm not."

John coughed. It was a nervous action, brought on by his saintly doctor's instincts in response to the second-hand smoke. "So what are you planning on doing, then? Going through cocaine withdrawal while you're high on some other drug? Disregarding food and water for a couple of days? With the window open when it's forty degrees out and pouring rain? Without anyone watching to make sure you don't kill yourself?" He sighed and glanced at me. I watched from the corner of my eye. "...Accidentally or purposefully."

A noise between a growl and a hiss tore itself from my throat, born more of surprise than of true anger. "What are you implying?"

"That you have a tendency toward extremes. You can't do anything halfway, can you? You're either ready to run up a wall with enthusiasm and swinging your arms all over the place and beaming from ear to ear with satisfaction or... you're like this. And right now—though I'm no psychologist—I'd... I'd say you're seriously depressed, Sherlock."

The air, the all-too-clean, too-cold air, rushed from my lungs and battered my heart on its way out as though he'd thrown something at me. That bastard. That fucking _idiot_. He had no clue. No _fucking_ clue what it was like to be... Who did he think he was to tell me that? Something I already kn... I was incapable of such things.

I was emotionless. Cold. Stoic. _Sociopathic._

My eyes slowly meandered toward his, meeting the candid, honey-colored gaze with what might have been a silent, icy sort of rage had I been capable of such emotions at the moment. They were blank.

"Why don't you get what you came for?" That was my voice. That was the voice I wanted to reconstruct for future confrontations. Low and biting and unreadable and furious. "Go pack up all your suitcases. Quickly. Sarah's probably expecting you back soon."

_Future confrontations_... There would be no future confrontations.

The sofa bounced as he stood, looking down at me with my bowl in hand, eyes tightened at the sides and brow furrowed in all-too-John-like anger. I stared back calmly. The several-minute lapse in my smoking was the only thing to blame for the fact that my fingers were once again trembling at my sides. Damn those fingers. Maybe if I broke them all, one by one...

John was suddenly at the window, pulling it shut to let the curtains fall limply back into place, exhausted and dripping like widowed sisters. He stuffed his hands in his pockets as I watched from the corner of my eye, his dark silhouette framed like an old-fashioned portrait against the gray of lashing rain.

He could stand there, perfectly still, without trembling at all.

"No," John said with a calm sort of solidity, still watching the raindrops sliding down the glass on the other side, "I didn't come to get my stuff. I came... just to come. I'm staying here, Sherlock. Right here."


	12. Fear

**Ahh, I love the new Sherlock episode! So. Much. Can't deny that Mycroft's foot absolutely made my life. :3 Annnndddd, Scandal gave me some new material to work with! ("Do you think tonight is a danger night...?" "I'm not sure. I'm never sure. We'll have to watch him." .) Hehehehehe... ^^ Okay, hope you likeee and aren't too scared off by my horrible attempts at writing British dialogue! XD Do drop me a review pretty pleaseee333**

"This is_ ridiculous_, Mycroft."

"Deal with it."

Our voices, once so notably similar in their soft, clipped, half-irritable tones, now presented a sharp contrast to one another, their echoes fading into the bathroom's heart and soul so distinctly that, even years later, I could sense the past tension still lingering whenever I was forced to return to Mycroft's home. His was the less changed half of the pair, but though it still remained controlled and calculating, something in the air registered the grimness within it, the solemn rage that he himself hardly recognized.

Mine, on the other hand, would have been utterly unrecognizable to anyone who hadn't actually watched my lips part, their cracked skin stretching painfully as I spoke, my tongue flicking out nervously to cool them. My voice was still low, true, yet the complex satin quality that invariably laced my words was lost, the control and tranquility I possessed sapped by the lingering scent of fear that clung to me.

The fear that matted my curls to my forehead, that dripped from my temples, that slicked my black T-shirt to my back and underarms. The fear that ached in my eyes in the dimly-lit room, that wracked my emaciated frame with shudders, that set fire to every vein in my body. The fear gnawing on my brain with rat's teeth, scratching and squeaking and flicking whip-like tails around the inside of my skull...

"I _am_, you—" I snarled through a gritted jaw, the muscles in my face clenching in fury.

"Good."

"...fucking bast—"

"Sherlock." Mycroft stared down at me menacingly, his beady gaze glaring over that jut-out nose like the eyes of a vulture.

I growled. "You know what, Mycroft? I will _fucking_ curse in your _fucking_ house whenever the _fuck_ I want to," I spat.

My brother scoffed at me, leaning back against the countertop with his hands on either side of him, studying the ceiling casually with a half-chuckle. "Certainly there are much more eloquent words in the English language than 'fuck', Sherlock. I would like you to use them while under my roof. You wouldn't be here were it not for my kindness. I expect you to repay me, or at least to adhere to my rules." He looked down, flashing me that mild close-lipped smile of his for an instant. "Understand?"

Oh my Lord, he really _was_ an idiot, wasn't he?

"I don't _want_ to be here," I hissed, my voice as slow and simplistic as if I were speaking to a toddler, "I don't _want_ to be 'under your roof'. I don't _want_ your 'kindness', _Mycroft_." I spat his name like an insult. "I wouldn't be here had you not _fucking_ _kidnapped me!"_

"This is for your own benefit." Like he knew better than I did.

"You do realize that the moment you let me out of here I'm going to go get high again, right? You're not truly that touchy-feely to believe that you may actually change my opinion?"

I'd touched a nerve; I could read it plainly on his face. His countenance had sunken back into that hopeless, despairing mask I'd recognized early on was a signal of vacillation.

"Sherlock, I..." He paused, sighing and staring at the carpet. _Make up your mind, already, make up your mind...Let me go._ "I care about you."

I snorted. "I'd believe that if you weren't trying to kill me."

Mycroft's head snapped up, his eyes intent on mine, despite their unstoppable wandering, his gaze boring through my throbbing mind. "I'm trying to _save_ you, Sherlock."

A bitter chuckle escaped me, sounding high-pitched and wild as it bounced off the floor tiles. I sank further down the wall, shutting my eyes against the harsh brightness of the rest of the world, feeling the numbness of caustic, implacable fury rising within me. "Save me." It was soft disbelieving anger that laced my voice.

"Yes!" He was irritated now. "I'm trying to stop you from killing yourself! You're a human being, no matter what you may think! Okay? I've been watching you go downhill for three years now. I've got myself a house and a job and a girlfriend and you just... You should be in university. But you're not. You're roaming the streets with nothing but that damned violin of yours and sleeping in tube stations and not eating and... I didn't even recognize it at the beginning, when you were still in fifth form and everything was fine and nothing was ever serious. But maybe I should have stopped it then and maybe it's too late now. I don't know when it stopped being just fooling around and became... like this. But, in all seriousness, Sherlock, I'm at the end of my rope. I've got to try to put a stop to this now, whether you like it or not. I'm not watching you die."

"You said 'damned'," I muttered, folding my arms. Wrap them tight enough and maybe the shudders will stop. Or maybe they won't. Maybe the whole world is shaking.

Mycroft was still silent.

"And you're being melodramatic," I continued, waiting for a response.

"This situation is melodramatic."

I opened my eyes slowly, further tightening my arms as my stomach wrenched painfully, trying to rid itself of absolutely nothing at all. I didn't even bother turning toward the toilet; I just gagged, squeezing my eyes shut again as Mycroft watched.

"I'm fine," I panted after several moments, unsure whether I was merely continuing the conversation or waving off his concern.

"You're _not_ fine."

I went silent, unsure of how to respond.

"Please listen to me, Sherlock." He was begging now. I swallowed, feeling the muscles in my throat contract painfully, opening my mouth in attempts to take in cold air.

I didn't want this. I didn't want this at all. I never wanted this again...

"Okay," I whispered.


	13. Need

**Ya know, to be entirely honest with you, I wasn't a huge fan of **_**Hound**_**. I found it to be predictable, overly-angsty, and out-of-character. First of all, Sherlock would never experimentally test what he thought was a dangerous hallucinogen on John. He cares so much about John and his wellbeing! (I did quite enjoy that 'I've only got one' line, though. ^^) He also wouldn't start crying over something so... not worthy of crying over. The point of Sherlock isn't that he tries to be stoic and cold and is secretly hiding all of this angsty whatever; it's that emotions and feelings confuse him. The writers directors are just catering to the fandom now, which bugs me. They **_**created**_** the fandom! Do whatever you want and don't just try to please us! We **_**like**_**. **_**Your. Ideas.**_** Not our own. They've already become clichéd; don't add to the unoriginality by stealing it from your fans! Do whatever you want, Mr. Moffat and Mr. Gatiss. **

**...Okay rant officially over. XP Go on and read.**

Cold. Cold. So cold. The floor beneath my back is tapping the heat from my body like maple syrup, sipping the life from my shuddering form, its unyielding flatness mellowed only very slightly by the cocoon of fabric between it and myself. I've dug myself a groundhog's hole in this zipper-button-brambled thicket of blankets and clothing and pillows, my mouth centered beneath the only hole to take in the icy air.

I can hear John crashing around the kitchen, his humming and clattering bouncing around the heating duct beside me, bouncing around the emptyempty rooms, bouncing around my brain... I wish I could fall asleep. I wish I could make this stop. I wish the heat would come back on. I wish I were alive...

"_Have you been...?"_

"_No."_

_Flat line fury. Dull and stoic and dark and extreme of the don'ts and..._

"_Don't lie to me, Sherlock. I know you better than you know yourself." All glarey-eyed concern. Disappointed concern. Self-concern. Angered concern._

"_Clearly not." Fuck concern._

"_Sherlock..."_

The lining of my skull being scraped away with long, white-lacquered fingernails.

"_No. Absolutely not." _

"_Not what?" What not? No... Know what? _

"_I'm not letting you into a crime scene like that." Fear in the grayness of fogged-out steam in the windows and yellow tape. Such light-hearted darkness, this._

"_Ha. Yes, you are."_

"_Go home, Sherlock. Please go home." If red-weighted buoy were sinkable... Curve, curve, point. "Go... take a shower. And sleep it off, whatever it is. I don't want to know. You can come back..." Quiet. Hush. Hiss-'s'ed harsh-throat whisper. "... come back when you're sober. Okay?"_

_Write and left backwards..._

Nothingness. I hate this nothingness. I hate the nothingness of sound. John's gone to bed. I hate the darkness. It's creeping with cricket-legs onto the sheets and spreading long antennae over my cheekbones into my nose and I just... I hate the... everything.

I fucking hate everything.

I need...

My legs have sprung to motion without my consent, a lurching leap spinning my body from the warm, dark closeness of my nest of blankets and into the darkness of the room, unsocked feet squelching on the frosty wood floorboards. I feel momentarily like a child who has awoken from a nightmare, jumping out of bed to rush to the safety of a parent's bedside, to crawl in beside them, to nestle between the sheets. Mycroft never obliged to my lisping pleads for protection from the monsters under my bed. He mumbled for me to go back to bed before lapsing back into the exhausted snores of an overworked teenager. I never dared to run for Mother.

I need...

My knees are threatening to give way under me. _You worthless pieces of shit!_ My mind-voice is a general's, a hoarse, over-worn shriek. _Come on! Get a move on, soldiers! Move! Move! Move! _The door handle is cool beneath my palm, the latch fidgeting as my fingers tremble, tremble, twist, pull...

Step, step, step... Grasp the railing. My lips have parted, my eyes have shut, my legs have locked. Everything is shaking. I feel... old. World-weary. Homesick. Homesick for wherever consciousness is prior to birth, after death.

_I want to go home. I need..._

I've reached the door with my eyes closed, but they pull themselves open as I finger the smooth wood, feel the warmth behind it. The crack of light beneath it is so inexplicably comforting that I want to sink to my knees and sob for a while. To relinquish my hold on whatever is keeping me attached to myself.

But I just knock.

"Hold on just a moment; I'll be right there! I just have to..." Cheery voice. Bustling behind the door, the sound of an oven swinging shut, scent gushing around me, enveloping my senses in the feeling of being just outside.

"Alright, I'm coming now! I'm coming..." The door swings open. "I'm sorry that took so long, I was... Oh! Sherlock, dear! I thought you were John! I was just..."

My arms wrap themselves around Mrs. Hudson, her bristly curls of white hair brushing my neck, her housedress swinging around my legs, her tiny, stout body warm and solid in my embrace. She's been baking cookies. Chocolate-chip cookies. How wonderfully, simply, comfortingly cliché.

I hold her for nearly a minute, breathing in the scent of her powdery makeup, letting her knobbly little fingers rub circles on my back, her chest rise and fall against me a she sighs. She knows. Of course she knows. She knows everything even more surely than I do.

And, after several long moments, she's pulled away a bit, her arms still encircling my waist, to look me straight in the face, her head tilted thoughtfully to one side. Her pale eyes skim over me, over the purpley splotches rimming my eyes with exhaustion, over the shaking parted lips, over the winter-tree branches of my hair. She can detect the lingering traces of cannabis on my clothes. She can feel the uncontrollable trembling in my arms. The corner of her lips twist up ever so slightly in conformation.

But, in under a second, she's pulled away, turned her back to attend to the two huge, rectangular metal trays set to cool atop her stove. A spatula has somehow materialized in her hand; she's working away the melted ellipses of golden-and-chocolate dough from each tray, slipping them onto plates.

And her voice has a trace of a smile to it as she says, "Come in, Sherlock, dear."


	14. By My Own Devices

**Forgive me for my half-asleep-ness; it shows through in my writing when I start using phrases like 'for some moments'. :P**

**I haven't seen Reichenbach yet... DX I must find a way to watch it **_**not**_** online because I have a pathological fear of viruses. Sooo many tears, man. So many. (But I presume there'll be more **_**after**_** I watch it...) Hopefully soon! So, enjoy, all of you lovely Sherlockians, you.3 This isn't much, but hopefully it's enough to get me back on track with this fanfiction. Drop me a comment; they make me quiet cheerful. X)**

Mrs. Hudson's couch smelled like chrysanthemums.

Chrysanthemums. The sort of flowers that people placed on graves. That they scattered the petals of over ashes. That they folded into the hands of shrunken, waxen corpses left by night in Louisiana bogs.

I breathed in slowly, quietly, trying not to create noticeable movement beneath the pastel, floral-patterned comforter that Mrs. Hudson had dug up from somewhere in the depths of her closet. Listening to the silence, I ensured carefully, once again, that I had tucked each lank black curl, each cold-numbed toe, each sharp bend of a knee beneath the ugly blanket. Those things I could hear creeping in the dark— those _things_ with their nails scratching up and down the windows, their whispers and clicks and hisses echoing in the walls, their snap-boned fingers caressing the back of the couch as I lay at their mercy—those _things_ would not find me. They wouldn't.

Despite the sweat that bathed me, dripping across my nose infuriatingly as I lay perfectly still, my skin felt as though it had been lined with frost on the inside, the internal cold wracking my ribcage with vicious shudders. At times, my heart raced at such an unbelievable pace that I feared I might die, just laying here while my ears rang and my breath caught in cutting gasps. After a while, though, it would slow, sometimes so drastically that silver spots twinkled before my eyes, my limbs going heavy and weak and numb.

And then, sometime in the very early morning, I flung myself out from under the safety of the comforter, caught my reeling balance on the wall opposite the couch, and stumbled down the hallway on shaking legs.

Turning on the light in the bathroom was a mistake which I realized as soon as I'd done it, the glare seeping under the cracks of my eyelids into my skull, tearing away at my brain. I didn't have time to hit the switch again, however, before I was vomiting violently, my fingers grasping at the green hook-rug-covered toilet lid as I struggled to stay upright on trembling knees. _Dammit, dammit, dammit..._

I lay back against the vibrantly turquoise cabinets, kneading my face with my hands and allowing self-abhorrence to consume me for some moments. The kind of disgust that worms its way up the backs of its victims' legs, circling through the spine until it finds the heart and settles there, allowing its poison to seep to flushed cheeks and tear ducts. The kind of disgust reserved for the sort who have, by their own devices, successfully been driven to shattering.

_What the fuck have I done to myself...?_

And a voice inside my head, which sounded suspiciously akin to my own, replied, "You've killed yourself, Sherlock."


	15. Howl

**I'm feeling rather proud of this chapter, to be honest. It's not at all 'well-written'; I just like the whole Mycroft/Sherlock brothers thing. I'm afraid I've rather betrayed my standards and jumped on the angsty-childhood bandwagon which I've so despised... Oh well. Feel free to write a review! I love themmm3**

**Oh yes! And I know that Sherlock canonically doesn't play guitar, but I just couldn't resist when I'd decided on using this absolutely FABULOUS poem of Allen Ginsberg's. (Look it up; it's amazing.) I figure he's somewhat of a master-of-all-trades anyway. Poor Arthur Conan Doyle must be turning over in his grave. I've slowly begun to betray him more and more thoroughly after years of being a dedicated canon-lover. .**

He was propped up against a tree when I found him, leaning back on the knarled bark with his eyes shut and a smile pressed between his lips, cross-legged with a shiny, dark-wooded guitar in his lap and a ratty book held open by the toe of one bare foot. His head swayed to the rhythm like a charmed snake, his skeletal fingers plucking away in complicated arpeggios, his dark curls slick with oil; I don't think he'd showered in a week.

"_Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! Real holy laughter in the river! –_Go away, Mycroft.—_They saw it all! The wild eyes! The holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof to solitude! Waving! Carrying... _Fuck you!"

My younger brother's eyes snapped open, brow drawn in irritation as he glared at his guitar, now held firmly beneath my right arm. I stared back solidly, cold fury written in every premature worry-line of my face as I met the eyes that betrayed abnormally wide pupils, their blue reduced to a shimmering sliver encircling the black. Though I was quite a reluctant gambler, I would have been willing to stake a large sum of money on the chance that, were I to roll up the sleeve of his sweatshirt, there would be a neat little grid of track marks on Sherlock's forearm.

He couldn't even sit still without twitching.

The first question which came to mind was, "Are you able to stand without losing your balance? Or will I be required to carry you back home?"

"Neither. I'm staying here. Fuck you," he added as an afterthought, stretching his wiry frame and yawning deeply, wrinkling his nose.

I sighed.

"What were you singing?"

Sherlock cocked his head at me and raised a thin eyebrow, one edge of his lips tilting in a flicker of a smirk. "Not 'singing', Mycroft. _Reciting._ It's a performance poem. 'Howl', by Allen Ginsberg. It's excellent. Fantastic. Give me back my guitar. Would you like to read it?"

He shifted his weight, lifting the foot holding open the book so that it rustled closed, and then held it out to me with a shaking hand and a caustic smile.

"No, thank you," I snapped, taking a step backward and brushing myself off, "I prefer legitimate, well-written _literature_. Not that homoerotic, narcotic-influenced free-verse rubbish."

"Hallucinogen..." Sherlock muttered under his breath, "_Hallucinogen_-influenced."

I paused, wrinkling my brow, unsure of an appropriate response.

"Is that what you're..."

"No."

"Then what...?"

"That would be cocaine, dearie. Stimulant. Entirely different."

I snarled. He chuckled.

"Go back home and tell your mummy all about your little adventure, now, Mycroft. I expect she'll be wanting you home for dinner. I'm staying out here. I won't disgrace the sacred honor of the Holmes crest with my... _intoxication._"

"Sherlock, you cannot simply remain sitting under a tree after the sun sets. Come inside or you'll catch your death out here; it's nearly freezing already. Mummy'd rather you come in, even if you _are_ a bit... off." I was pleading now, waiting for reason to catch hold of him.

"'_Mummy'd rather'_..." he scoffed, sneering, "You're perfectly adorable, Mycroft, do you realize that? So innocent. Thinking your mummy wants me in the house. Or anywhere, really, for that matter. Oh, she doesn't give a fuck about her younger son." Sherlock raised one eyebrow and shrugged, grinning. "So odd to have one turn out perfectly— valedictorian, class president, captain of the track team, top test scores, gorgeous prom date—and have the other be such a... a _disappointment_. Am I right, Mycroft? That's word she used this morning, correct?"

My heart was freezing inside of me, my skin burning with guilt and a strange, unidentifiable feeling strangely akin to pride. All I could do was nod, my mouth slightly open, my mind dumfounded. And Sherlock continued, his soft, slightly hoarse voice laced with cold fury, his over-bright eyes gleaming, a sarcastic twist to his full lips.

"So, you can tell her that I'm not coming in whether I freeze to death or not. Hell, you can tell her I ran away. Got kidnapped. Found an entrance to Middle Earth. Whatever floats your self-righteous little boat."

I was handing him back his guitar as he spoke, shaking my head, turning away. There was nothing to be done. He was physically stronger than me. He was obstinate. He was angry.

He was right.

"I won't be cold anyway," I heard him murmur to himself as I walked away, head down, hands in pockets, "My heart's going much too quickly for that."


	16. Because You Came

**Soooo... This chapter.**

**Well, I'm sick. I'm quite sick, so I took the opportunity to stay home and type away all day. And now it's snowing and I feel like I'm sorta losing my mind and I'm nauseous and shivering and ache-y and I feel like this is the spirit of Sherlock yelling at me to stop harassing him in precisely the same way. X) So bear with me. This might make no sense. If that's true, then write a review (Ooo, rhymes!) and feel free to yell at me and explain what I've done wrong. And if it's not, then write me a review anyway. I like them.**

**Thanks a million for reading! :3**

_I've already done it once before, as you well know..._

There was breathing on the other end of the line. Only breathing. Thin, wheezing, useless breathing. Catching, sobbing, cut-the-back of your throat breathing. Terrified, miserable, agonized breathing.

My heart faltered, the spinning nausea of pure, animalistic fear raising the hairs on the back of my neck to expose the pale skin there to the night behind me. I took a step backward, pressing my jacket-covered back to the wall of the townhouse as I jostled the phone, clutching it to my ear.

"Sherlock?" My voice was controlled, efficient, though my insides were racing one another wildly. "Where are you? What's going on?"

There was a thud, as though the phone had been dropped, a rustle of static, and then...

"Home." The word was strangled, panted out with a clearly precious breath. But it was his voice, the quick, low, expressive tone still evident behind the sounds of panicked anguish. Hearing Sherlock in pain was decidedly uncomfortable; it was horrifying to realize that he too was a human being, despite all his pretences of transcending such a mortal level.

"_What's going on?"_ I repeated, my brow drawn and my senses in alarm, "Who's got you?"

There was a pause, the noise of something that sounded horribly like someone being violently ill echoing through the line. My lips parted in silent, terrified bewilderment.

"Send... send an ambulance, L-Lestrade." He was hardly coherent, the sound of gasping filling my ears.

My eyes darted frantically as I gazed forward, dumbstruck and horrified.

"Are you alright?" I asked quietly.

He hung up.

**) ( ) ( ) ( ) (**

"No."

She was short, with hair the color of strawberry yogurt parted in the middle and pulled back into a loose bun. Her white coat hung off broad shoulders that didn't match a slight frame; her tiny fingers, smoothed down into shiny nails at the tips, clutched a clear clipboard to a flat chest. Her eyes stared into mine infuriatingly calmly, green on gray.

"I need to see him."

"You can't." Her voice was snippy now, frustratingly self-assured and blank of emotion. "Leave your number at the front desk. We'll call you when he's able to receive non-family visitors."

I wrinkled my nose irritably. "That could be days!"

"Weeks," she corrected smugly, "He'll be admitted to the psychiatric ward once he's well enough. And they don't allow any visitation whatsoever."

I opened my mouth to inform her that she was using the word 'visitation' incorrectly before deciding against it. Instead, I sighed, tucked my hands in my pockets, and looked around tiredly. Hopefully, pitifully.

"Look," I said, gazing back into her eyes pleadingly with my eyebrows raised, my voice soft, "I'm with Scotland Yard. Sherlock Holmes works unofficially with us as a sort of volunteer assistant. He's a good kid. A very depressed, unfortunate kid who's undergone some bad times, but a good one all the same. I happen to be his personal friend as well as colleague, as strange as that sounds, seeing his age. But I'm the one who he called, the one who called the ambulance for him, who ran to his flat and stayed with him until it came. I've been worried sick about him. I know that this is your job and that you don't mean to be cruel but..." I looked her straight in the eyes, shaking my head and exaggerating my already haggard features as well as I could. "..._please_ let me see him."

There was a pause.

The nurse closed her eyes crossly, letting out an exasperated sigh. "You know what? Fine. Alright. You win. But don't you go telling _anyone_ that I let you in. I could lose my job over this, you know." She fixed me with a stare as a squirm of irrational guilt ran through me, but stepped around all the same and began striding down the hallway with long steps, her white tennis shoes squeaking quietly against the linoleum as she called over her shoulder, "Come on, Officer."

I followed obediently, victory and anticipation mingling with the fear in my veins as we traveled deeper and deeper into the seeming labyrinth of the hospital, wondering vaguely if they made the layout deliberately confusing to avoid the escape of people with situations like that of my colleague's.

The nurse stopped outside of a door after what seemed like an eternity of badly photoshopped posters of children with balloons, green-painted walls, and linoleum tiles.

"In here," she said shortly, raising an eyebrow and gesturing with her clipboard, "I'll warn you that he's in a bad way right now." She softened at the fear on my face. "But I'm told he'll be perfectly alright. Is he always so... irritable?"

A quiet laugh escaped me. "Irritable? That's Sherlock's middle name."

She allowed the corners of her mouth to turn up ever-so-slightly. "You have fifteen minutes, Officer." She opened the door.

Obediently, I stepped into the alcove between the door and a floor-length blue curtain, my throat dry and my heart pounding within me as the door swung shut again, leaving me in semi-darkness. I stood there for several seconds, pushing back the moment when I had to face the reality that...

"Stop standing back there listening to me breathe like a sexual predator, Lestrade," a familiar voice said. I started, and then laughed with pure relief, stepping forward to push back the curtain. Almost immediately, I halfway wished that I hadn't.

Sherlock was laying on the bed, except it wasn't Sherlock. It couldn't be Sherlock.

He was emaciated, waxen skin clinging to the cheekbones that were more prominent than ever, the eyes above them bruised into hollows with exhaustion. His entire frame, gaunt even beneath numerous hospital blankets, shook visibly with the effort of merely continuing to exist. Though he'd always appeared much older than his nineteen years, he now looked every bit like nothing more than an exhausted, underfed teenager, his hair matted and shiny with sweat, his lips trembling as he flashed me a sarcastic smile, his veins standing out in the wiry arm extended off the bed.

Holy _shit_, there were a lot of track marks on that arm.

That didn't include the multiple IVs adhered to it, either.

"Sit down, Lestrade. Make yourself at home. Welcome to my humble abode." He gestured at a dirt-residue-slicked, yet highly disinfected-looking, plastic maroon chair in the corner. I shook my head, still trying not to stare at him. Aware of my discomfiture, he cocked his head and glanced at his left arm, then smirked and tucked it beneath his blankets, folding it over his stomach.

His pupils were the size of pinheads.

I cleared my throat, willing myself to swallow the lump that had risen in my throat. "How have you been?"

"Just peachy," Sherlock yawned, kneading his eyes with his right fingers, "The detox was my favorite part. Oodles of fun, that was. I think Mycroft came to see me at some point during; he hasn't come since. He doesn't want to talk to me."

"Why not?"

"Oh, he's angry at me for some reason or another. It may have something to do with the fact that he believes that I attempted suicide roughly a week and a half ago."

I flinched. "Was it?" I asked quietly.

Sherlock raised his thin eyebrows at me. "A suicide attempt? No. It was purely accidental. Even I make mistakes." A corner of his mouth quirked upwards. "Rarely. But sometimes."

"This particular mistake..." I began hesitantly, "How exactly did it... come about?"

His smile spread into a caustic grin. "Cocaine. A bit too much of it. A shitload too much of it, truthfully."

I bit my lip, remaining silent. He did as well, mocking me.

"Have your parents visited you?" I asked eventually.

It didn't occur to me that I had never before seen Sherlock truly laugh until that moment. Certainly, I'd hear him chuckle quietly to himself at another's stupidity, or snigger at his own subtly witty remarks, but never actually fully express his amusement as he did then. It was a surprisingly thin and high-pitched sort of a laugh for a person with a voice as deep as his own, loud and sharp and echoing off the walls with a manic sort of urgency, as though he'd never have another chance to do so again.

It absolutely terrified me.

"Lestrade," Sherlock sighed, closing his eyes, still smirking, "My father drank himself to death when I was fifteen. My mother sent me to live with my uncle—my father's brother, also an alcoholic, incidentally—a year later. I haven't spoken with her since. Nor have I spoken with my uncle since I walked out on the morning of my eighteenth birthday."

The room went icily silent. I sat down in the chair, folding my arms and leaning over my knees, eyes darting over the floor.

"I'm sorry," I said, uncertain of how to respond.

He shrugged. "I enjoy the independence," he stated flatly.

My gaze flicked toward him again, watching me with mild amusement, his eyes as alive as though someone had simply forced the mind and heart of the Sherlock I knew into this shattered body. This was the body that lay shuddering on a hospital bed with IVs in its innumerably punctured arm, with its curls in greasy tangles and its bones jutting out painfully from its face. The body of someone neglected, broken, and world-weary. The body of a lonely and self-abused alley cat without a firm grasp of reality. The body of a frightened, drug-addicted, clinically depressed teenage boy.

But it held the mind of a brilliant man.

I smiled gently back at him, standing and stretching and looking at my watch. Seventeen minutes had passed, most of it in silence. There was never much for me to say around Sherlock.

"I have to leave now," I said.

"I know."

"I'll come back sometime soon."

"I know."

I looked at him. He chuckled gently, his blue eyes meeting my gray ones serenely.

"You're in a pretty good mood for someone recovering from an overdose."

He hummed lightly and shrugged as I pushed back the curtain once more, looking back over my shoulder.

"It's because you came to see me."


	17. Warmth

**Sooo much fluff going on here. ^^ No worries, I don't write slash—John and Sherlock are most definitely **_**not**_** in love, you guys, no offense (do you really think **_**JOHN**_**, of all people, is gay?)—but I do love to include a lot of friendship-y nonsense. Poorrrr Sherlock... He's having a rough time. You know what would make him feel better? Reviews. Yup. **

**Hehehe thanks for reading! Love you all! :3**

Coat-buttons down up against the wind, the collars turned, the arms clenched round chest to hold the shudders where they belonged. My core shuddered. My lips shuddered. My knees shuddered, threats of dropping the half-hollow glass space between them. Toes balled in shoes. Numb from cold. Numb from detachment. Numb from alcohol. Numb from the sickness eating holes in my heart, in my vessels, in my lungs, spine, fingers, knees, throat, stomach. Wrists. (But I hadn't done that in a very long time). But not my mind. No, that would be left to scratch, unpeice itself from the insides out, the horribly soft curls of flesh under fingernails.

I chuckled to myself, crisping the sodden air with white folds of warmth, pulling it into my lungs, relishing the heat inside me that was all too soon tepid like long-used bathwater. That was the problem with warmth, as with most lovely things. It went away very, very quickly.

That chilling sort of burning slicked the back of my throat once more. The bottle was getting emptier. The world going sepia, honey- smothered. My limbs growing less responsive. But it still hurt. Everything still hurt.

So. Fucking. Much.

Eyes closed, rest lids on lids, orange streetlight-darkness-color tingling through gently, moon through bat's wings. Backward. Forward. Backward. Forward. Waves of silent, controlled implosion-agony falling rhythm, dreaming of soft sleep. I think a whimper slipped itself catlike from the frictionless spaces between my lungs.

"Hey." Flinch, reel, tear open upright, stare. Pound eardrums, hammers slowing. And an arm settled itself around my shoulders.

Laundry detergent. Chai. Horrible cologne. Just-awoken-sleeping-scars sweat.

"Hey," he repeated, his voice gentle, softer than a whisper yet so very, very _there_. "It's okay. It's okay."

No. It's not '_okay'._

I pushed myself away, disgusted with the physical contact and infuriated with his sickeningly paternal aura.

"John," I growled, refusing to be terrified at the sound of my own voice, harsh rasp, the agony plain in the undertones. My back turned slightly toward him, I slumped over with elbows on knees, staring blank-eyed at the movement of the pavement beneath my slippered feet, and drew almost desperately on my cigarette. "John, _leave._ Go inside. _Now_."

He nodded, eyes gazing into the darkened street almost as though trying to give me privacy.

"Only if you get off the doorstep and come in as well," he said quietly after a while, raising his eyebrows, "It's too cold for _me_ to be out here, let alone you. You'll catch your death."

"That'd be nice," I snapped.

"Dear lord, you're a real bastard when you get like this."

"I'm a bastard all the time," I said irritably, lifting the bottle from between my knees to my lips, tilting my head back and swallowing. It burned my throat. I hated drinking. But it was so infuriatingly necessary. "...And what the fuck do you mean, _'like this'_?"

He was looking at me now, his head titled to one side and brow furrowed. "Are you drinking straight vodk—?"

"—Not important," I muttered, taking another heedless swig, "Answer my question."

John looked at me. I looked back at him, raising my eyebrows almost threateningly.

He sighed. "I mean... sad. You get sad sometimes. And angry. Sort of self-destructive. I've noticed it's usually between cases or when it's particularly cold or when Mycroft shows up... and, you know, when it happens, you just hide for days and don't eat or sleep or talk at all. And I don't really know how to talk to you anymore because you're not exactly, well... the same. Do you know what I mean?"

I turned my shoulders to look at him, watched his eyes flicker through mine for a moment, then dropped my head again and stared back narrow-eyed at the ground, pulling hungrily on the cigarette held between quaking fingers.

"You're beginning to sound like Mycroft," I scoffed contemptuously, "Without the obnoxiously classy vocabulary. He used to call them my 'black fits'." I smirked almost imperceptibly at the name.

"I don't know if you remember me saying this, but..."

"You think I'm depressed."

"Well... yes. I'm almost positive about that, to tell you the truth."

I stubbed out my cigarette and turned to face his, titling my head to the side and looking at him as solidly as my unfocused blue gaze would permit.

"I'm not depressed, John. I've never been depressed and I never will be. I'm disappointed in the world, frustrated with it, yes, but that's to be expected for anyone with the intellect of a marshmallow. Anyone who can see past the acts that society puts on for us is bound to be let down. Life is pointless, life is long, and life is commonplace. The world makes a point of antagonizing us, teasing us, giving us just shy of what we wish for. Anyone who says otherwise is either stupid or simply falling into the sickeningly enticing trap of deceiving themselves into optimism. Without specifically searching for something to live for and believing it fully, there _is_ nothing to live for. Old men live for their families. Children live for the promise of fulfilled expectations; a lie. Teachers and congressmen and parents live for the idea of a future made the better for their contributions. Mycroft lives to make himself worthy of life itself. Lestrade lives to protect. You live to heal and to comfort." I inclined my chin at him.

John watched me, his bottom eyelids creeping upward, eyebrows drawn downward. "And what exactly do you live for?"

My heart started within me, my mind rearing. Stalling, my cold hands gripped the bottle again and I took a long pull from it, coughing slightly as the harsh liquid caught my throat and made me squint, rubbing my tired eyes to put John back into focus. The edges of my consciousness were going extremely fuzzy.

But the aching wasn't. The shudders weren't.

"Now you're the one not answering questions," John said after a very long pause.

I sighed. The pressure of the darkness, the cold, the terror was claustrophobic. Escape, escape, escape... Frosten howls of horror, of hairy muzzles teeth-backed snuffle in ears smoky-aired-cold breath, laying in hot-scarlet melts of snow, laid out like frogs on biology-black-quickly-dry tables. Hard to hear in sile... Slice open the top, scalpel skull on termite-crack, hands slime warm, gray, wound-up tendrils. Plops heavily in the sink and slides, dripped blue bubbles on and take up the brush. Scrub away the thinking, the unlove, the horrified shock and...

"I'm not entirely certain," a tired voice from somewhere in my frostbitten core said quietly.

Hurts, hurts, hurts... Longing to grip skin pale between teeth, strong gather over veins, muscles... and pull, rip out, drenched-sleeve-scarlet of inside wrists. Quaking stomach, rocking spine, humming-lost mind-bird. It dripped down my cheek... wet, salty, warmed-air of matted, closed lashes.

A heavy warmth fell around my shoulders.

And, quite suddenly, I was leaning heavily into his embrace, my head on his chest as he inhaled and exhaled, gripping me firmly as uncontrollable shudders wracked my exhausted frame. Tears, those traitors of my mind's control, those shameful, reckless things, soaked my temple pressed against his coat. I hated myself, I loathed myself, I was disgusted by my myself for needing him.

But I did.

"I... I apologize," I gasped after several minutes, breathing in the scent of his cologne and closing my eyes in shame, "I'm _very, very_ drunk."

John chuckled. "I noticed."

I sighed. We were both silent for a while, listening to the quiet movements of the darkness around us, the distant wail of sirens, the vague hummings people just awaking for a very early-morning's work, the rustling of various stray creatures through the street. It wouldn't be light for some time, but life still continued. It always did.

"John?"

"Hmm."

"Please don't give up on me." My voice was quiet.

I could feel his quiet chuckle, the shake of his head.

"Sherlock," John said solemnly, "For someone so brilliant, you really are quite stupid."


	18. Alive

**Last chapterrrrr! ^^ ...Wow, that's a weird thing to say. No worries, I think I might do a sequel at some point. X)**

**Thanks so much to everyone for reading! Oodles of love to you all! S2 **

**Keep believing in Sherlock Holmes...**

He was sitting in a back corner when I arrived, wearing an atrocious fur coat and a matching smile.

It was warm. Steam and lamplight and coffee-chocolate-mint-scent filled the air with an inexplicable coziness, the people clustered up into their sweaters and armchairs and glasses and fingerless gloves, paperback mysteries clutched before them and mugs warming their palms. Jazz music slipped through the sounds of blenders whirring away, the hoarse voices of the many-pierced, black-haired baristas, male and female, with coy smiles and animated eyebrows and green aprons, the tip-tap-typing of writers on slim, glowing-apple Macs.

My legs wound themselves through the tables and couches and shelves as I bypassed the line to the counter, loosening my scarf as I scraped back the chair opposite his back-corner-booth. A rice crispy treat sat before him, half-eaten, looking strangely lonely on the large plate.

"Good of you to agree to show up," Mycroft greeted with a twitch of his polite smile.

I hummed, examining the table, avoiding his direct gaze. _A mother and two children sat here before us. She was far less than middle aged. One child was a boy. The other was younger than he. They had hot chocolate. They went to the library..._

"Might I inquire as to your health?" His voice was prodding; I could sense his eyes on my forehead.

"You may," I replied coolly, looking up with splayed fingertips white-pinkening one another on the opposite. His eyes were dog's eyes, calf's eyes, yet somehow impossibly intelligent, glassy, unreadable, blank through choice alone. "But it's very likely I won't respond."

Mycroft nodded almost imperceptibly, tipping his head. "You skipped ordering coffee. You love coffee. You survive almost solely on the stuff." I raised an eyebrow at him. "Migraine? Or stomachache? Or both? I observe you're running a slight fever. And, ahh, look at your hands..."

A snarl slipped itself from my throat as I lowered violently shaking fingers to my lap, watching him irritably from under a lowered brow. "Are you just naturally a pompous bastard? Or do you need to work at it?"

He chuckled to himself. "Merely trying to be frank. You dislike when I'm falsely polite, do you not? And... quite honestly... you're a mess."

I closed my eyes, sighing. "An _improving_ mess," I corrected quietly.

Mycroft acknowledged me with an inclination of his forehead. "I'll give you that."

A smirk alighted itself on my face.

The room hummed absentmindedly to itself as we sat there in its midst, each collecting our own thoughts, my eyes stinging with exhaustion behind closed lids, pulling French-Roast-scented air into my lungs and vaguely-crackly-recorded piano notes into my ears. Mycroft was taking delicate nibbles off of his rice crispy treat, his soft chewing clanging off the walls of my mind. My fingers found their way to my forehead, the cold digits kneading the burning flesh, squirming nausea tugging at my throat. One hand caught the side of the table. The world was spinning, bending, threatening to fold inwards on itself. I tugged at my curls with the other hand, elbows digging into my ribcage, teeth blood-letting the insides of my lips, the catching-gasping-panting rising into me, forcing itself through my lungs...

I opened my eyes.

Mycroft was watching me knowingly. Quietly. Concernedly.

But I let go of myself and leaned back in my chair, letting the final shudders run themselves up my shoulders. They were slowing. The air was warm. I had slept for nearly fourteen hours the night before. John had made me toast for breakfast and I had eaten it. My violin was freshly polished, in its case, and awaiting my return. My mind was desperate to tear something to pieces. Lestrade had promised me his next murder. There were endless people around me just leaving and entering and coming and going and talking and laughing and planning and thinking...

The world was open and free and cleared and wide and infinite and I was in it. Alive in it. Ready to run its entire expanse, to examine it, rediscover it, display it, bask in its glow of endless questions and excitement and terror and joy and pure, blissful exhilaration. To just simply live.

So, I looked at him and I smiled a tiny bit and I said, "I'm fine."

And I really did mean it.


End file.
